


A Certain Peace

by foolyoulove



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Blood Loss, Competency, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, POV Female Character, Phone Calls & Telephones, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Uncharted 2, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolyoulove/pseuds/foolyoulove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nate probably really did need a moment to rest from the effort of carrying Elena out of Shambhala, and Chloe could appreciate that fact. She still felt, though, that he was doing entirely too much pleading with an unconscious woman, and not enough figuring out how to keep her alive."</p><p>or: Chloe takes charge, calls for back-up, and then gets introspective.  Filling some blanks left in <i>Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Certain Peace

**Author's Note:**

> I have binged on so much Uncharted gameplay and fanfic and meta in the past month that I can't even tell where my own ideas start and end anymore, so if there's any resemblance to existing works, please know it's entirely unintentional.

Nate probably really did need a moment to rest from the effort of carrying Elena out of Shambhala, and Chloe could appreciate that fact. She still felt, though, that he was doing entirely too much pleading with the unconscious woman, and not enough figuring out how to keep her alive. Chloe was decent with field medicine, but fantastic with vehicles, and suspected the latter might be of more benefit to Elena's condition at this point. She left them at the entrance to the stairs, and ran the rest of the way to where the convoy had parked to see what she could find. 

Chloe was pleasantly surprised by how little time it took to find a canopied jeep with plenty of gas in the tank and the key in the glove compartment, not to mention the fact that there didn't seem to be any humans left here to bother her. She subconsciously checked the parking brake and stepped on the clutch before trying the ignition, which brought the engine chugging to life. "Oh, _thank_ you," she purred. She had already started to close the glovebox when a satellite phone caught her eye. Chloe figured Elena must have had one at some point, but who knew if it was still usable? The one in the jeep, upon inspection, proved to have a charged battery. "Well, at least two things have gone right today, then," she mused. She moved the vehicle as close as she could to her companions before hopping out to jog the rest of the way back.

"Nate!" Chloe called out. He looked up at her, startled, and swiped at his eyes as she approached. "Come on, I've found us a 4x4 and a phone. We need to keep moving." When he didn't immediately respond, she lost her remaining patience. " _Now_ , Nate. We didn't get this far just to let her bleed out in your arms."

"Okay, okay, you're right." He gathered Elena back up and straightened his back. "Let's go." As he followed her to the jeep, he continued to speak, slightly strained. "I don't think the phone is going to do us much good right now—I don't know if Lazarević still has men in the cities, and I don't think we have time to make it any farther than the village we came from anyway." Chloe opened the rear of the vehicle and stepped aside so he could climb in and set Elena down. "Let's hope the same guy who patched me up can help her,“ he said, as he gently laid Elena's head on his lap. 

"God, you're shit with first aid, Romeo,” Chloe chided. “She's lost blood and is probably in shock. Her brain needs circulation a lot more than her feet do right now."

"Right, yeah, of course. Head down, feet up. Got it," he said, as he tried awkwardly to reposition with Chloe's help. They jostled Elena quite a bit in the process despite their best efforts, which earned a whimper from her. "Shh shh shh I'm sorry," Nate soothed.

Chloe softened her own tone. "Hey, pain is probably a good sign at this point. Speaking of shock," she thought aloud, "wait a second." She spotted a discarded coat on the ground next to one of Lazarević's dead henchmen, whom she reckoned wouldn't miss it, and tossed it to Nate as she climbed into the driver's seat. "Cover her up with that. She doesn't need hypothermia on top of the rest."

"Thanks." Nate quickly followed her suggestion, gently tucking the jacket around Elena. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Chloe muttered, as she shifted the jeep into gear.

They didn't talk again until they were approaching town. "I don't suppose you speak any Tibetan?" Nate called up to her, raising his voice over the engine noise. "We'll need to find Tenzin, fast, and we'll need to tell him what happened."

"You know the guy's name—that'll be enough to get someone's attention if he's not home. And I'm pretty sure he'll know enough about what happened when he sees her. We'll manage, alright?" 

When they made it to the village, they did find Tenzin rather quickly (" _The third thing that went right today_ "), who led them Schäfer's house, rather than his own. Chloe understood the logic—the home was spacious, and as of today, officially vacant. She still felt like an intruder, though, considering that she'd been party, however unwillingly, to the man's kidnapping and murder. Tenzin, despite the havoc wreaked in his town recently, immediately sprang to their aid, gathering supplies and clean water as Nate and Chloe worked on removing Elena's tattered, filthy clothing. Chloe wryly noted the strangeness of helping her newly-ex-lover undress the woman he clearly favored, but decided to save sharing that line of humor for if—when—the other woman recovered.

Tenzin made short work of removing the steel fragments from Elena's flesh, cleaning the wounds, and bandaging her up. Chloe assisted where she could, but the man wielded forceps so deftly that Chloe wondered if he'd had formal training. It was lucky for them, too; Nate appeared to finally be going through withdrawal from the adrenaline that had been driving this whole crusade, and his hands were shaking so uncharacteristically badly that he couldn't do much besides pace the room until they were finished.

All they could plan to do for Elena at that point was keep her warm and watch for signs of infection. Tenzin excused himself with Nate's thanks, as the latter parked himself in a chair with his elbows on the bed. Although Chloe had suggested he maybe eat something, take a nap, or at the very least clean himself up a bit to avoid Elena waking to the sight of him half-coated in her own blood, she hadn't really expected him to listen. 

Chloe herself couldn't bear the thought of just sitting around, though, so she set off to try to make herself useful. She had already spent a couple hours helping with the cleanup of the town before she remembered the satellite phone stowed in the jeep. She retrieved it under a sky that was darkening, yet seemed spitefully clear, considering the day she'd had. As she dialed, Chloe hoped that the number she knew was still good—people in their line of work did tend to go through a lot of burners.

She waited tensely through three rings before she was greeted with an unmistakably brusque, "Who is this?"

Chloe felt an unexpected rush of relief at hearing English from someone who wasn't a.) Nate or b.) trying to kill her. "Hello, Victor." 

"Chloe?"

"Last I checked," she said, leaning against the side of the vehicle.

"What the hell is going on out there?" She heard rustling, as though he might have sat up in bed—it occurred to her that she had no idea where Sullivan was, nor what time it might be there. "I haven't heard anything in days."

"We've been... busy. Mostly alive, for now, but busy."

"You've gotta give me a little more than that. Is, uh... is Nate—"

"He'll be fine," she replied to the implied question.  "Managed to save the world despite a recent gut shot."

"Gut shot?  Jesus," he hissed.

"Courtesy of Flynn, who's dead, by the way."  She'd need to sort her feelings on that at another time.  She also thought it prudent to leave out the part where Nate had been shot during a rescue attempt she had rebuffed.  "Nate'll be alright," she reiterated.

"Then why are you the one calling?" he asked, voice tinged with suspicion.

"He's keeping vigil at Elena's bedside."

" _Elena_?"

"You know her too, then?" She hadn't quite expected that.

"Yeah, the reporter?  Holds her own but doesn't know when to quit?"

"That's the one."

"Huh. Did he go gaga for her the moment he saw her again?"

"Yep,” she replied.

"Sorry, darlin'." 

He did sound sympathetic, but it truly wasn't a can of worms that needed opening. Chloe settled for, "It's fine."

"Let me guess—his hero complex went into overdrive around her, too."

Chloe let out a humorless laugh. "You do know him best. Almost got all of us killed trying to save her cameraman, who didn't make it, by the way."

"Damn.  How'd she get mixed up in this, anyway?"

"I've probably already said too much over the phone." Chloe hesitated.  "Suffice to say, she'd been working a more traditional war-criminal angle on the same psycho we were after."

"So, what happened to her? 'Bedside vigil' doesn't sound too promising."

"Pollyanna was trying to offer redemption to Flynn right up 'til he blew himself up with a grenade."

"Son of a bitch."

"Indeed. The same local who kept Nate from dying from his bullet did his best for her, but..."

"But?" he prompted.

"It felt like Nate and I ended up wearing a litre of of her blood, there's no way she didn't crack ribs, and, God, I hadn't even considered that she might have a concussion, too.  We can't hardly give her a blood transfusion in a remote mountain village, and it feels far too risky to try to move her, now."

"You think she's gonna make it?"

Chloe pursed her lips as she considered the question. "Can you travel?  I think Nate might need you."

"Shit. That bad?"

"He'd surely deny it, but I saw tears.”

He exhaled sharply. "That bad, then."

Chloe heard more movement on the other end—she suspected Sullivan was already starting to pack—and spoke again.  "Regardless, we could all do with a familiar face. Especially someone with the means and wits about them to help us travel back to civilization with some discretion."

”Can you get me coordinates?"

"I'll figure something out. We are in roughly the region you'd expect, though."

"Give me an hour to start making some calls, and then call me back at this number, alright?"

"Thank you, Victor. You might not want to keep that number for much longer though," she cautioned. "I ' _borrowed_ ' this phone, so... who knows."

”Thanks for the heads' up. I expect to hear all about Shambhala when I get there, though."

"Who said we found anything?" And what had she _just said_ about sparing details over the phone?

"Ah, I figured you would have said by now if it had been a total bust. Talk soon, Chloe." He hung up, and Chloe considered the phone in her hand for a moment before setting on the path back to Schäfer's house to fill Nate in.

Nate was, not surprisingly, in the same spot she'd left him, but his head had dropped to his arms on the mattress and his slow breathing told her his own body had finally given in to exhaustion.  Rather than disturbing him, Chloe leaned against the wall with crossed arms for a moment of reflection. She had always excelled at using sarcasm and entendre to dance around matters of the heart; it was probably integral to why she and Nate got on so well.  Affection and sex and wit were never problems, but trust, it turned out, had been spotty all along.  If she was being honest with herself, she had always known the two of them weren't meant to be.  It didn't mean she couldn't still care a great deal for him, though, and clearly the feeling was mutual if he had been willing to infiltrate a speeding train to come to her aid.

Elena, for her part, had earned no small measure of respect and endearment from Chloe in a very short period of time, despite their initial uneasiness.  She was stubborn as the rest of them, but with a stronger moral center—yes, she seemed to inspire what Chloe considered to be questionable decision-making, yet was somehow grounding to Nate in a way she herself probably never could be.  Any idiot could see he was mad for her, and Chloe worried at her lower lip as she considered what might happen if Elena never woke. Chloe was a pragmatist, almost to a fault, and knew the injuries were serious. She still allowed herself the hopeful observation that just a bit of color appeared to be returning to Elena's blue lips and too-pale features as she crossed the room to tuck the blankets a little tighter around her.

Chloe stole a glance at Nate, and briefly considered waking him to spare him the inevitable aches that would come from sleeping so awkwardly, but decided his need for rest was more important. Satisfied that he was sound asleep and not likely to confront her about this nurturing streak anytime soon, she grabbed a spare, light blanket, and draped it over his shoulders.

She mentally noted the time she'd need to phone Victor again before quietly setting a second chair next to the bed and putting her feet up near Elena's. Chloe told herself that it was prudent to keep an eye on her while Nate slept, but she knew it was almost pointless—either Elena was going to make it or she wasn't. They didn't have the means for any further medical heroics. Really, though, after a job that had gone more spectacularly sideways in more ways than she could have possibly imagined, she found a certain peace in simply keeping watch.

**Author's Note:**

> My first published fic outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How did I do?
> 
> no copyright infringement intended, etc etc etc...wait, do people still do these disclaimers?


End file.
